


What's in a kiss?

by weirdindeed



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: First Kiss, Fluff, Ineffable Husbands being Lovebirds, Kissing, Love Confessions, M/M, My first story in this Fandom, a bit of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-06
Updated: 2019-07-06
Packaged: 2020-06-16 16:27:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19655452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weirdindeed/pseuds/weirdindeed
Summary: A simple list.An even simpler feeling.A terribly complicated situation.(With a happy ending)





	What's in a kiss?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [My future Husband (and Angel) Christopher](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=My+future+Husband+%28and+Angel%29+Christopher).



> The parts in italic are flashbacks, the others are set in the present.

  1. **Delicacy**



_How gently Aziraphale’s wings had sheltered Crowley from the rain, not aware of how that would have just been the first of many times of trying to protect him._

_Crowley’s body closer to his, just standing there, his yellow gaze lost somewhere in the desert, attentive, witnessing humanity’s first steps. The trust the demon had instinctively put in him and how Aziraphale just reciprocated it, well aware of how ‘wrong’ he should have felt by his proximity._

_Well aware of how good he actually felt._

How slowly that night, centuries later while standing in St. James’s Park, Crowley had decided to lift his hand first, grasping at Aziraphale’s cheek, and just then to carefully take his time with drawing closer to him, his eyes fixed on the small, pink mouth of the angel, an imperceptible trembling of his fingertips making the contact with Aziraphale’s skin feel unsure and ephemeral.

  1. **Tenderness**



_How Aziraphale had been staring longingly at the brochure of a small hotel in the centre of France, one that promised the best crepes and pastries of the entire Europe, for weeks. So much that Crowley at some point had put train tickets and the receipt of a booking to that hotel in the book that Aziraphale was currently reading, on the desk in his bookshop._

_The latter had been so surprised and genuinely happy that he had phoned Crowley immediately, his phrases continuously interrupted by giggles, trying to convey how amazed he was that the demon had managed to notice how much he would have loved to go there without ever expressing it out loud._

_How Aziraphale had cared to specify that he would not have gone unless Crowley added another train ticket and hotel booking to his own._

The way one of the angel’s hands had soon met Crowley’s one on his face, how soft the demon’s skin felt under his, how easy it felt to touch him, even though they weren’t used at all to physically touching the other.

How Aziraphale’s clear, bright eyes shined under the street lamps, words impossible to read in his eyes, an imperceptible ‘yes’ on his mouth, slightly curved in the hint of the sweetest smile.

  1. **Breaths**



_Even though it wasn’t a necessity to him, Aziraphale used to take deep, slow breaths before meeting with Gabriel and any other angel. It wasn’t as if he could physically experience anxiety or distress the way humans did, but the thought of having to deal with them brought a considerable amount of discontent to his mind and, consequently, to his body as well. And he’d discovered that the simple act of breathing helped soothing that annoying feeling._

_On the other hand, he noticed how often he found himself sighing while in Crowley’s company. Not the kind of sigh one lets out while in a boring, tedious situation: more the type one naturally frees when looking at something they love. The simple, almost unexpected need to let in more air than usual and to let it go just after, Aziraphale’s chest lifting a little, his lungs full, his soul full just as much - but of something different from oxygen._

The sharp intake of breath Crowley took just before closing the distance between their lips - his hand still on the angel’s cheek, the latter’s hand slightly holding the demon's -, highlighting how tense he was, would have made Aziraphale smile if his mouth wasn’t suddenly busy meeting the demon’s.

Crowley’s nose kept on fulfilling his primary mortal task of providing oxygen to his body while he was kissing the other, even though he didn’t really need it, probably because Aziraphale’s face and especially his mouth had a different, marvellous scent from his usual own, and he just wanted to get drunk on it.

Aziraphale was breathing too, the smallest waves of incorporeal heat escaping his lips between the chaste, brief kisses they were exchanging, disappearing on Crowley’s mouth and chin.

They were almost humans.

  1. **Hesitancy**



_How Crowley wanted to scream every single thing he’d never had the courage to admit even to himself that time that Aziraphale’s voice had pronounced the poisonous words he’d hoped to never hear from him._

_‘It’s over’_

_There was nothing, however, he could have said to change the angel’s mind. Or so he found himself thinking, when looking at him with his heart on the sleeve, feeling naked and stupid and shattered by that brief, horrible sentence in a way he didn’t think he could still feel._

_The only other time he’d ever felt like that before was when he’d endlessly fallen from Heaven, just like many before and after him, hitting not just the ground but the fire beneath it with nothing to grasp to and no one to save him._

_Nothing to deaden that immeasurable pain anymore._

_However, his voice had betrayed him, the last hold onto their friendship, onto their memories, onto his feelings for Aziraphale, and he’d murmured unintelligible words before turning his back and just leaving, his eyes cloudy as they hadn’t been since literally ages._

Even though it had been maybe a minute since their mouths had met for the first time, Crowley suddenly seemed to realise what was actually happening and brusquely shrunk back from Aziraphale, just a few steps, but enough to put their usual, invisible distance between them.

His yellow eyes darted on the angel’s face, a shape so familiar and so comforting to see, an incredibly simple mixture of skin and bones and hair that put together created the most beautiful being on Earth - and Heaven - and Hell.

Aziraphale stared back at him with just as much intensity, _‘don’t be afraid’_ seemed to say his candid eyelashes, _‘it’s alright’_ said his eyebrows, _‘come back to me’_ screamed his body.

But too many questions, too many worst case scenarios haunted Crowley’s heart, strangling it so tight he would have felt like choking if something like that was possible for him. So he stood three painful steps from Aziraphale, his back to the lake where the ducks were sleeping somewhere on the island, in the centre.

Aziraphale didn’t move for a solid minute, silently calling him, waiting for him, praying for him. He then slowly sat on the bench behind him, the street lamps making it seem like a safe piece of land in the middle of a sea storm.

Crowley’s mind, in the meantime, had become a tangle of what ifs, spacing between ‘I’m going to regret doing this because he’ll get killed’ and ‘I’m going to regret not doing this because it’ll kill _me_ ’.

  1. **Rush**



_No matter how fresh the wound still was, Crowley just had to try one last time to run away and take Aziraphale with him._

_He’d rushed to the bookshop feeling his body so weird and unfamiliar that more than once he felt like he was going to randomly discorporate in the middle of the street. He hated human emotions but, willingly or not, he’d begun feeling his own version of them by living so close to humans all those millennia._

_He’d jumped out of the car,_ ‘Angel!’ _, but Aziraphale looked cold and still as a statue, even though around him were so many people running left and right._

_Crowley didn’t say ‘please’, but every inch of his body basically screamed it. He didn’t beg him with his words, but his eyes, hidden by the thin black lenses of his sunglasses, were clearly begging him._

_And they didn’t even have any time left: it was a matter of hours, and they were the only hope for humanity and more importantly for each other, at that point._

_But Aziraphale had just said ‘I forgive you’ and refused once again, as if forgiveness could have changed the fact that they were going to disappear soon and never have any chance to meet halfway and stay together and fall in love as they’d been doing until then._

_As if it would have been of any comfort to know that he’d been forgiven even though his own nature was the living version of ‘unforgivable’._

Then Crowley had confidently walked those fateful three steps and messily sat beside Aziraphale, grabbing his face with both his hands this time and with much more urgency than before. As Aziraphale was going to let himself melt in the relief of having the demon physically close one more time, Crowley kissed him again before he could start thinking, pressing his lips harder onto the other’s as if that was the last thing he was going to do.

Aziraphale reciprocated his urgency, his hands gripping at the fabric of Crowley’s shirt, his mouth welcoming the other’s tongue and letting it meet his own, a contact so intimate and hot that it made him feel his face on fire.

Then it was just an exchange of raw emotions one after the other, their lips louder than any voice, influencing one another in a confusing but still harmonic kind of dance: Crowley was terrified of having to lose him, so he was kissing Aziraphale so hard that his nose was disappearing in the small space between the angel’s nose and cheek, his breath heavier, his hands trembling violently on the blond’s face. Then Aziraphale was completely lost in the thought of being finally able to taste Crowley’s mouth after centuries, so he was tilting his head on a side and savouring the demon’s lower lip with his tongue, and Crowley would calm down and let him take his time with it.

But both still had the dreadful feeling that that was just going to be one small drop of happiness and tranquillity, so no matter how slow the kiss would get, they would soon start attacking each other’s mouth once again, terrified of opening their eyes.

  1. **Looks**



_There had always been an invisible, although perfectly visible to them, channel of communication between Crowley and Aziraphale, and that was their looks._

_It wasn’t just the time they spent looking at each other, but really the way they did it, sometimes staring for entire minutes, sometimes briefly catching a glimpse of the other’s emotions while he was looking away._

_Sometimes their eyes would be so full of feelings that just by meeting with the other’s they felt like touching burning embers._

_No matter how Crowley often took advantage of his sunglasses to try to hide his thoughts, Aziraphale would see right through them and through each barrier he tried to rise, consciously or not._

_And no matter how Aziraphale would try to conceive the emotions he thought too hard to handle or process, Crowley would notice every wrinkle, every fold around his clear, beautiful eyes and recognise his moods, although the angel would often try to make them look like something completely different from the truth._

_There had been an evening they had spent in a really fancy restaurant in Chinatown, in London, where Aziraphale had been served a different dish from the one he’d ordered. It was clear as day, to Crowley, that the angel wasn’t only disappointed, but embarrassed as well, since he would have preferred to discorporate than to tell the waiter what was wrong, for so many reasons. But Aziraphale was smiling and pretending that nothing was bothering him - God knows to please who. So the demon had informed the waiter of the mistake instead, specifying that they would have paid for the extra dish anyway, just not to make Aziraphale worry about any wasting._

_It hadn’t been some kind of grandiose miracle, but the way Aziraphale had looked at him just after had reminded him of the soft, immaculate clouds he could see in Heaven so long ago, and also of how worth it was to do these small things for the angel every time, even though they made almost no sense to him._

Crowley had removed his sunglasses at some point in the middle of the kiss, leaving them on the bench beside him, mostly because they were in the way and rubbing Aziraphale’s face in a very unpleasant manner, getting dirty too in the process. So his eyes, although closed, were now exposed to Aziraphale, that had slightly opened his own to gaze lovingly at the wrinkle of pure focus between Crowley’s eyebrows, his eyelids trembling as a result of the squeezing of his eyes. Then the demon opened his eyes too, his lips still conjunct to Aziraphale’s, barely touching them, a spark of love in the angel’s irises when their eyes met, his hands lost into Crowley's hair.

Crowley slowly brushed his mouth onto Aziraphale’s, whispering unintelligible words, the back of his own hand caressing his cheek, fearing both looking away and blinking, as that would have interrupted the contact they had made by locking eyes like that.

Everything felt so simple and horribly complicated at the same time: the solution to every problem right on the other’s lips and the very source of those same problems lying on the tip of his tongue.

They just couldn’t escape.

  1. **Longing**



_Since they both had so much to do, they wouldn’t meet often and, more importantly, not for long. Which made them long for every bit of interaction with more and more intensity, especially when they actually started knowing each other._

_Sometimes Crowley would look for Aziraphale while crossing crowded train stations or busy city streets, every blond, pale person catching his eye for a second, then quickly disappearing between twenty other people, forgotten, as they were not_ him _._

_On the other hand, when they were together, Crowley had come up with this small strategy of his to try and have a bit more of Aziraphale for him when they were parted: he would focus really, really hard on a moment they were still enjoying together - perhaps Aziraphale was laughing, or looking at the sky, or talking about that marvellous buffet full of exotic food –, and Crowley would imprint small bits of that image in his mind, pieces of a puzzle that he would later put together to remember the situation at its fullest: the curve of Aziraphale’s shoulders, the small white curls on his head, the way he lifted his eyebrows, widen his eyes, curl his nose, the clothes he was wearing, the veins on his hands, the light on his skin, the shadow at his feet… all stuck in Crowley’s mind, ready to bring him comfort while parted._

_And, even though they weren’t the real thing, they were just enough to make him feel like Aziraphale was still there with him, at night, when the void was deeper and the silence deafening._

They had finally parted, after a while of just losing themselves in the other’s dreamy eyes with their lips joint, not because they really wanted to, more because they felt like they had to, just like when you’re awake late at night and _know_ that you should be asleep, even though you’re not tired at all.

Aziraphale’s hand gently grabbed Crowley’s shirt once again, a silent request, ‘don’t put too much distance between us’, a request that the demon seemed happy to abide to.

There was no one around, St. James’s Park was closed since hours by then, and there seemed to be no supernatural presences around aside from them; nevertheless, they felt like they were about to separate, as if God Herself was silently whispering to them that it was time to go.

After a little while, Crowley just couldn’t bring himself to look at the other anymore, for he was too busy in trying to remember Aziraphale’s taste in his mouth and the lovely scent that his lips emanated. He wasn’t sure they were going to see each other any time soon after that, perhaps the angel was just about to tell him something along the line of ‘this was a mistake’ or ‘I don’t want you to get in trouble’, to then disappear into the night and leave Crowley staring at the empty space on the bench, _their_ bench, hating himself.

But Aziraphale’s hand was still on shirt, as his crystalline eyes were piercing the demon’s face, waiting for him to reciprocate the look and reassure him that it hadn’t just been a spark of passion, not just the rush of the moment, not just Crowley pressing buttons to see what would happen.

Not just a small part of the Great Plan destined to start and finish right there on that bench.

  1. **Love**



_Aziraphale had realised what he felt for Crowley not long after they started meeting regularly. It would have been impossible not to: it was clear as day._

_What he also realised was that there was no way in Heaven or Hell that he could risk ever saying it out loud, which was why he’d come up with many, many ways to tell it to the other without using those three specific and dangerous words._

_He would for example make Crowley’s demonic job easier by creating discord among people that he was pretty sure the other was about to meet: the demon’s face when he would realise that there wasn’t a lot left to do except for taking the merit for whatever the hell happened with those humans was priceless._

_He would also, most of the time, express it with his voice: his words may not have been ‘I love you’, perhaps he would just say something like ‘it’s good to see you’, ‘thank you’, ‘I like your new shoes’, but his voice was tender, kind, full of love for him._

_And Crowley would notice, of course._

_But, unlike Aziraphale, he was continuously looking for the perfect time to confess his own feelings to him. Which he never seemed to find. Mostly because the angel would – certainly on purpose – break any mood that was just a bit more intimate than the usual._

_It was really frustrating._

_Crowley invited him to countless dinners, dates, beautiful spots or places he was sure Aziraphale liked, he bought him small presents, sent him flowers he’d planted and personally took care of to specifically have them grow more beautiful and colourful than any other. And there was always an opening, a brief moment of quietness that he could fill with_ the _confession, but… Aziraphale always seemed to read his mind just before he could even open his mouth, standing up from the table or taking leave - never abruptly, just with too much of a specific timing._

 _Crowley, however, had anything but given up on it, still trying to find_ the _moment, telling himself that it may have been the last thing he’d do on that rotten planet, but he would definitely succeed at it._

_And, in fact, he did._

What struck the demon that evening, just before lifting his eyes back on Aziraphale’s expectant face, was that there never would have been a perfect moment except for the most unexpected one.

Which was why he reciprocated the angel’s look, held the latter’s hand tightly on his chest and finally managed to say out loud what he imagined himself saying for _millennia_ , his voice surprisingly steady, his lips trembling - betraying the overwhelming feeling that was crushing his ribs:

“I love you”

It’s not like there was any true need of making it explicit. After all they’d been through and after all that time it was basically the same as saying out loud that God really had the worst taste when it came to making people that couldn’t peacefully be together fall hopelessly in love - so useless, in fact.

But Crowley still wanted to say it.

Maybe it was because he was sure that whatever face Aziraphale would delight him with would be stunning, or simply because some feelings at some point get so loud and strong in one’s body that the poor flesh prison just has to manifest the damn emotion, otherwise it would probably explode.

Truth be told, it may have just been because Crowley wanted him to know for sure.

Aziraphale’s face was, in fact, priceless: he knew the demon could be unpredictable, even though he’d learned to recognise a pattern in his unpredictability, but he wasn’t expecting such a straightforward confession just after that mess of a kiss. So he was staring at Crowley with a mixture of bewilderment and wonder since, of course, he was on cloud nine (metaphorically, it tends to be a pretty crowded place…).

And no matter how hard he tried to focus on the fire of the moment, on Crowley’s shimmering eyes, his mind was still lingering on the very unpleasant thought of the consequences of that confession. What if someone heard him? What if someone found a way to _record_ him? After their body swap and perfectly coordinated strategy no one, on any side, had made any contact with them, but that didn’t mean they weren’t going to try it in the future.

Just imagining a world, any world, without Crowley was enough to bring him physical pain.

Crowley wasn’t exactly expecting an answer, but seeing Aziraphale so puzzled made him almost regret such an impulsive decision. Almost, because having finally said it out loud was one of the best feelings he’d ever experienced. A literal weight had been lifted from his chest. Or that might have just been Aziraphale’s hand, which went back on the angel’s side not long after the confession, as if he’d been burned.

Aziraphale wasn’t looking at him anymore, which could have meant two things: one, he was so happy he didn’t know what to say or how to say it or, two, he was so mad he didn’t know what to say or how to say it. Either way, Crowley felt relieved.

The park around them was silent, just the gentle flowing of water coming from the pond in the background, an ambulance screaming far away, every leaf on every tree on edge, waiting for Aziraphale to say something.

When he finally spoke, his voice had a small note of sarcasm:

“It really is incredible how you still manage to find new ways to surprise me, Crowley”

The smile on his lips felt like a victory to the demon, that didn’t answer him, glad he hadn’t been turned down or stopped before he could finally say it.

“What surprises me isn’t what you… said,” the angel continued while getting closer to Crowley once again, his head slowly meeting the demon’s shoulder, the latter stiffening for a moment, “It’s the fact that you _needed_ to say it out loud, to let me know. I think it’s just…”

Together they had prevented the damn Apocalypse. Together they had changed the world. Together they had proved that it was possible for an angel and a demon to not just cohabit, but to help each other.

Together they had built a bridge between two worlds and between them and they had built it so solid that no matter how many years they were apart, no matter how strong the water underneath would flow, it just couldn’t fall.

They both knew that at that point there was no turning back, just a long, surely torturous path ahead.

And they were willing to walk it until the end.

“… _ineffable_ ”

The next kiss they exchanged lasted so long that the first ray of sunlight surprised them still there, on the bench, intertwined with each other.

**Author's Note:**

> I know it's a pretty simple and maybe nonsensical story, but I had this idea of this funny list and they just make me so happy so I wrote it while in a horrible mood to distract myself (...) and I really wanted to share it! I'm so glad I've stumbled upon these two, I really can't find the words to express how much I love them.  
> You can find me on Twitter: @bobasrasca ♡
> 
> Thank you so much for reading!


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